I’m So Excited is horny and it wants you to be too. Failing that it will get you high, and then horny. In his latest flick, Almodóvar has turned his perpetual hard-on skywards, in a frothy, spunky comedy about a crash-landing plane and how musicals killed real cabaret. It’s a high-camp, high altitude affair fashioned out of sex, drugs and cock jokes; Almodóvar finds these irresistible to the point where he even names the airline Peninsula. We’re invited inside this 500mph phallic symbol for heavy doses of anally-smuggled, mescaline and retro Valencian cocktail, along with endless tequila shots and occasional bursts of touching honesty.

I’m So Excited is an allegorical critique of the current Spanish financial catastrophe. On board a flight from Toledo to Mexico City the pilots soon discover a technical fault. They circle nervously as the cabin staff attempt to conceal the problem; economy class are drugged into submission and business class have their questions answered with obscure “technical stuff” followed by free-flowing alcohol and a spectacular rendition of the titular song courtesy of the three intensely camp male cabin stewards. Save however for the establishing shots (a newspaper report on the year’s top ten financial crises) and the brilliant end shots of the darkened interiors of the white elephant, Ciudad Real airport, the whole metaphorical construction seems like an excuse for Almodóvar to indulge himself in fabulous debauchery.

To follow up a series of more sober works, like The Skin I Live In, with what is essentially a piece of light, bawdy comedy is an act that testifies to Almodóvar’s laudable insouciance, but it strays into self-indulgence. The film is breezy however, and with sympathetic characters, especially the stewards, Joserra, Fajas and Ulloa, it exudes warmth. This is helped by the pervasive bubblegum colours, and the reliably dexterous cinematography of José Luis Alcaine, which is crisp and easy on the eye. Perhaps it’s just the tonic for depressed Spaniards but if so the jokes aren’t frequent enough. They also aren’t transgressive enough to make up for their scarcity. In Almodóvar's earliest films the whole 'closeted homosexuals being funny purely by virtue of their closeted homosexuality'  shtick  might have worked as an immediate response to Franco-era conservatism but twenty years later it feels staid.

Ultimately, this return to his priapic early days satisfies his own concern with whether men really do give better blowjobs than women, before it satiates his critical audience. No bad thing maybe, but it’s consequently dividing opinion. You could do a lot worse than accepting the great director’s invitation to the mile-high club and finding out for yourself.